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H H PPP CCC UK NATIONAL HPC SERVICE
H H P P C C --------------------------
HHHHH PPP C x x provided by
H H P C C xx EPCC and
H H P CCC x x CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory
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HPCx User Mailing 079 9 August 2005
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Contents
** Capability incentives
** New beta release of NAMD
** August courses in Edinburgh
** EPCC Workshop: Blue Gene and QCDOC: Next Generation of HPC
Architecture
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Greetings--
CAPABILITY INCENTIVES
The justification for the existence of HPCx is to enable people to do
work which can only run on such a large system. Part of our mission,
however, is to help people to develop their computational science so
that they can take advantage of resources like HPCx, both now and in
the future.
The capability incentives are part of that programme. The idea is
that codes which scale well to large numbers of processors are run at
a discount - that is, you are charged for fewer AUs than you have
actually used. Discounts can go as high as 30%.
A description of the scheme can be found here:
http://www.hpcx.ac.uk/support/documentation/capability.html
If you would like to know more about this, please get in touch with
the helpdesk.
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NEW BETA RELEASE OF NAMD
We have installed the beta 1 release of the forthcoming NAMD 2.6 on
the service machine. Please have a look at
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/namd/2.6b1/announce.html
for the key advantages over the current NAMD, version 2.5. Using the
NAMD APO-A1 benchmark the HPCx support team have observed a speedup of
around 15% for NAMD 2.6b1 over NAMD 2.5.
If you are a registered user of NAMD, you can find the new executable
namd2-6b1 in the usual directory. (The old version is still
available.) If you are interested in NAMD but have not yet registered
to access it, you should contact the helpdesk.
The developers emphasise that this is a beta release. Users should be
cautious about teething problems and other bugs.
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AUGUST COURSES IN EDINBURGH
We're running three courses at EPCC in August - see below. All we
take place at the EPCC in Edinburgh, and are free for UK-based
academics.
Please note that this is the festival season in Edinburgh, a very busy
time, so if you are coming and need somewhere to stay overnight, you'd
be well advised to book as soon as possible. Here is a list of places
to stay in the vicinity:
http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/contact_us/accommodation/
For links to the various Festival sites, see below.
To register for these courses, please use the standard registration
form:
http://www.hpcx.ac.uk/support/training/form.html
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INTRODUCTION TO HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING
Monday, August 22, 2005 at EPCC, Edinburgh
Further details:
http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/computing/training/courses/course_summaries/HPCconcep
ts_summary.html
Note that only material from the first day will be covered.
JAVA FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING
Tuesday-Wednesdya, August 23-24, 2005 at EPCC, Edinburgh
Further details:
http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/computing/training/courses/course_summaries/OOforHPC_
summary.html
Note that only material from the days 2 and 3 will be covered.
PRACTICAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
Monday-Thursdy, August 29-September 1 2005 at EPCC Edinburgh
Further details:
http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/computing/training/courses/course_summaries/SoftDev_s
ummary.html
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THE EDINBURGH FESTIVALS
The Edinburgh International Festival:
http://www.eif.co.uk/
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe:
http://www.edfringe.com/
The Edinburgh Tattoo:
http://www.edinburgh-tattoo.co.uk/index.html
The Edinburgh Film Festival:
http://www.edfilmfest.org.uk
The Edinburgh Book Festival:
http://www.edbookfest.co.uk/index.html
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EPCC WORKSHOP: BLUE GENE AND QCDOC: NEXT GENERATION OF HPC ARCHITECTURE
National e-Science Centre, Edinburgh
Tuesday-Thursday, 4-6 October, 2005
The first IBM e-Server Blue Gene system in Europe was delivered to
EPCC in December 2004. The University of Edinburgh has also recently
installed a QCDOC machine, providing one of the world's most powerful
systems dedicated to the numerical investigation of Quantum
Chromodynamics. The Blue Gene and QCDOC architectures offer a
significant breakthrough in supercomputing technology, providing
unprecedented computing performance coupled with very low power
consumption, floor space and cost.
With the growing popularity of these systems, across a wide range of
applications, a workshop investigating their full potential is highly
topical. As the only centre in the world to host both a Blue Gene and
a QCDOC system, the University of Edinburgh is the ideal location for
such a workshop.
The workshop will be sponsored by IBM, and hosted by EPCC at the
National e-Science Centre, Edinburgh, UK. The programme comprises a
series of presentations from experts users, developers and
programmers.
Registration for this event is free. For further details and to
register, please go here:
http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/BGworkshop/
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Regards
--John
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--
John Fisher j.fisher@epcc.ed.ac.uk
HPCx User Administration and Helpdesk
HPCx: http://www.hpcx.ac.uk Helpdesk: support@hpcx.ac.uk
Phone: +44 131 650 5029 Fax: +44 131 650 6555